A Requiem for Iraq

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Istanbul–The United States should help Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki fend off the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria given the threats the group poses to American allies and interests, but Washington should also let Iraq go. The country no longer makes sense to the people who live there.

When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) marched into Mosul last week it was hard not to imagine that the Middle East was entering some previously unimaginable new era. A terrorist group that suddenly looked like a liberation army of sorts was setting up a proto-state across two major countries of the region. If all the incorrect references to the “end of Sykes-Picot,” which died in 1919, are any measure, the ISIS invasion and prospect of Iraq’s split evoke an earlier time when Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George, and Woodrow Wilson as well as newcomers to the scene, Feisal bin Hussein bin Ali al Hashimi, Mustafa Kemal, Saad Zaghloul, and Chaim Weizman, among others, struggled over the “Near Eastern” or “Turkish question.” In the ensuing almost one hundred years, the borders that came to be after Versailles have become institutionalized and a sense of national identity has become embedded in the minds of Jordanians, Lebanese, Palestinians, even Syrians, but the Iraqi story is more complicated.

The cases of peaceful dissolutions of countries are few and far between—the velvet divorce between Czechs and Slovaks being the only one of recent memory. It is also likely that if Scots vote for independence in September, Royal Marines will not march on Edinburgh. The end of the Soviet Empire did not result in the bloodshed that one might have imagined, unless one is a resident of Grozny. Still, most partitions are hard and bloody. How many South Asians died when Pakistan split from India or when East Pakistan became Bangladesh three decades later? The Sinhalese fought a bitter war against the Tamils to save Sri Lanka. How many Bosnians, Croats, Serbs, and Kosovars died fighting each other in a country that no one much wanted to exist? Yugoslavia was the Iraq of the 1990s and it may yet be that Libya is the Iraq of the next decade (or this one).

Just because dissolution and partition is hard and bloody, however, does not mean that the United States and its allies should do everything possible to forestall this outcome in Iraq. Leslie Gelb and then-Senator Joe Biden set off a bruising debate in May 2006 when at another desperate moment they suggested that Iraq be dismembered for the sake of Iraqis and the poor Americans who were stuck in the middle of someone else’s civil war. Iraq looked to be on the verge of collapse, but the force of American arms and a policy right out of the colonialists’ handbook of enlisting locals—with copious amounts of money—to fight on the side of the United States rescued the country. There will be no surge this time, however, and no sahwa (or “awakening”) nor “sons of Iraq” to fight off al Qaeda of Iraq.

Ironically, those sons of Iraq are not as committed to Iraq as the historiography of the surge and awakening suggest. It is true that Abu Musab Zarqawi in the first iteration of ISIS overplayed his hand and alienated the people of Anbar, Nineveh, and the other parts of Iraq west of Baghdad. Yet the fact that Zarqawi’s nihilism repelled them does not mean that the tribes of the area were necessarily committed to the idea of Iraq. The Anbar province, in particular, was never completely assimilated into the country in a manner that made sense to the people there. It is no surprise then that at those moments when even Saddam Hussein faced challenges to his rule, they invariably came from Anbar—with the exception of the Shi’a and Kurdish uprisings of 1991. It should not come as much of a surprise that ISIS began its offensive six months ago in Anbar and has now extended it to the neighboring Salahaddin province all the way up to Mosul. These are places of profound alienation and resistance to Baghdad, but it is not just Saddam’s Baghdad or Maliki’s Baghdad that is the problem; it is Baghdad, more generally.

Had Maliki been inclusive—something that was impossible given the constraints and incentives of Iraqi politics—he likely would have still confronted resistance from areas of the country that chafe at the centralizing propensities of those in the capital. And herein lies the fundamental problem of Iraq: The country’s political physics create pressure to pull it apart. To the extent that people in Anbar and neighboring areas, no less the Kurds and many in the south, do not want to be ruled from Baghdad, it only gives impetus for rulers there to accumulate power in an effort to ensure that the country remains intact. Yet this only fuels yet more resistance to the capital. It seems that only Saddam-like brutality could keep the country together. Once American forces smashed that system of fear, the process of dissolution was set in motion.

If the Sunni tribes of Anbar and elsewhere have chafed under the centralizing forces of Baghdad, the same (and more) can certainly be said of Iraq’s Kurds. In 1925, at the recommendation of the League of Nations, which was under the pressure of the British Foreign Office, the former Ottoman vilayet of Mosul was unceremoniously attached to the state of Iraq. The British, who held the Mandate for Iraq, were less interested in the people who inhabited the area than what was underneath them—oil. The inclusion of Mosul in King Feisal’s synthetic realm happened over the strenuous objections of both the large numbers of Kurdish inhabitants and the government of the newly established Republic of Turkey. The Kurds wanted nothing to do with Iraq and the Turks feared the loss of Mosul would—despite the fact that Iraq’s Kurds were folded into what was then the Kingdom of Iraq—nurture the development of Kurdish nationalism. In the eighty-nine years since, the Kurds have been searching for ways to undo what the League did while Ankara has sought to block them from doing so.

In a quirk of fate, ISIS has done significant service to Kurdish independence. They have struck a blow to the Iraqi security forces, allowing the Kurdish army—known as peshmerga—to take over Kirkuk, a city central to the national aspirations of Iraq’s Kurds. Now that it is in Erbil’s hands, they are unlikely to give Kirkuk back. There remain many obstacles to that Kurdish dream, including the Kurds’ own difficult internal politics and an economy that cannot yet support it, but ISIS has removed one of the biggest obstacles in the Kurds’ path: Turkey. Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s march on Iraq all the way down to Tikrit will likely force Ankara to accommodate itself to Kurdish independence. As counterintuitive as it may seem given Turkey’s one-time implacable opposition to the emergence of an independent Kurdistan, Kurdish strongman Massoud Barzani will be Turkish Prime Minister (soon to be president) Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s best partner in insulating Turkey from the security threats emerging from Iraq. Suddenly, for Turkey’s foreign policy establishment and military leaders, an independent Kurdish buffer in Mesopotamia looks rather appealing.

Iraqis in the south do not seem any more committed to the country than either those in the rapidly expanding areas under ISIS control or Kurds. Just because Maliki is Shi’a and the southern part of Iraq is predominantly Shi’a does not mean there is a shared sense of national identity. The response among the Shi’a to defend Baghdad is impressive, but it remains to be seen whether the volunteers view this as a national or religious duty. Of course, it could be both, but the intention of ISIS to replay something akin to the battle of Karbala in 680, which contributed to the emergence of Shiism, has certainly aroused Iraq’s Shi’a on specifically religious grounds. Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who did everything possible to keep the lid on Sunni-Shi’a violence during the dark days of 2006 and 2007, has made a direct sectarian appeal to meet the ISIS threat. It seems that the exigencies of a potential wide-scale intra-religious conflict is the most potent factor mobilizing the Shi’a in the south, rather than national sentiment.

Economic grievances are also pulling at the tenuous links between the Basra governorate, for example, and Baghdad. Basra sits atop Iraq’s largest pool of oil, but it is also its poorest governorate. Local officials have long complained that federal authorities have thwarted the area’s ability to rebuild and have sought—in line with the Iraqi constitution—to establish itself as a “region” with powers independent of Baghdad. Whereas the commitment to a federal Iraq with enhanced powers to pursue their own development strategies once made sense to Basra’s leaders, they may be thinking otherwise given the current turn of event in Iraq. With considerable parts of the country under ISIS’s control and the Kurds looking for ways to capitalize on Baghdad’s weakness to advance their own independence, why would Basrawis stay? The area has so much black gold that it could look like Dubai if it was not saddled with Baghdad.

Kurdistan, ISIS-land, and the state of Basra will not emerge effortlessly. Iraq’s dissolution will be bloody and protracted. The irony being that although no one wants to live in Iraq, the people there will fight over its remaining spoils—mostly oil. In the midst of this maelstrom, prominent voices will call for some sort of American return to Iraq. Smart and well-intentioned people will propose aid packages, drone strikes, air strikes, special forces operations, political deals, envoys, and Special UN representatives none of which will help matters very much. Iraq is broken and it cannot be put back together again.

Opinions expressed on CFR blogs are solely those of the author or commenter, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions.

Yeah we need a central government for one reason to divide the oil money or the country would always be in civil war. But we wait and see how much ground the Sunnis clear and hold in the longer term. Then just send out a few case officers and bags of money and put the tribes back on the payroll. It will erode support for al-qaida, allow CT and intelligence against the hard core members. It will work better than bombing the tribes, helping al-Maliki crackdown under the guise of CT or getting into bed with Iran. Or greatest threat is the ability to use force and carry out the threat with action. I find people prefer the money most often. The one thing is if the level of Iranian involvement or can no longer turn a blind eye or control al-Maliki to stop a civil war and al-qaida safe haven we may have to give the iraqi forces a dose. So we could find ourselves given all non compliants a dose from hard core al-qaida, iraqi forces to shift militia and Iran Ian irregulars. Look at Assad it is not perfect and is taking longer but we got the WMD without firing a shot, because the threat was real. That was why 43 was feared because the threat is real that is why the US is feared and a thug gives up his WMD. And in the end they fear 44 when the threat is real and if forced he will act even if standing alone with his dog as his only friend in DC and globally, besides the French that is.

Posted by Mahmoud RatebJune 17, 2014 at 5:47 pm

IT SEEMS THAT THE WRITER WANTS TO ABSOLVE THE U.S.A FROM THE SINS AND EITHER STUPIDNESS OR PLANNING THE DISSOLUTION OF IRAQ.IT STARTED WITH THE DISSOLUTION OF THE ARMY AND POLICE THAN THE SO CALLED CONSTITUTON AND THE COMPLETE BIAS TOWARDS SHIA AGAINST SUNNAH.THE AMERICANS DID NOT EVEN CARE TO LISTEN TO THE SAUSIS WHEN THEY CRIED “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING,YOU ARE GIVING IRAQ TO IRAN ON A SILVER PLATE” .BY SUPPORTING IRAQ’S “MILOSEVIC” WHO HAS PURSUED EXACTLY THE SAME TACTICS DRIVING A WEDGE BETWEEN THE IRAQIS DOES ANYONE EXPECT A DIFFERENT CONCLUSION?THIS IS THE FREEDOM & DEMOCRACY THAT “W” WAS PROMOTING OR IS IT PART OF THE JIGSAW OF CONDOLEEZZA RICE

Posted by Patrick CumminsJune 18, 2014 at 10:32 pm

I agree that Iraq is broken and is not going to be put back together. Those “smart and well-intentioned people [who] will propose aid packages, drone strikes, air strikes, special forces operations, [etc.]“, would be wise to recognize the demise of Iraq and accept the partition of the country. Their efforts should be put into minimizing the violence by separating combatants instead of trying to reconstitute Iraq as a viable state.

The same also goes for Syria. It’s inconceivable that the central gov’t of Syria, anymore than that of Iraq, will be able assert its authority throughout the country.

Posted by CincinnatusJune 19, 2014 at 3:47 am

You should read the article again – the author is not calling for dissolution of Iraq or absolution of US responsibility for the current mess. Rather, the author is pointing out that Iraq is already broken beyond repair forecasting what happens next among the competing regions of what was once Iraq. The Iraqi civil war is largely divided along religious lines though there are ethnic elements as well. In any event, the US will not get involved in a war among Shia, Sunni and Kurds for practical and political reasons. Hopefully the civil war won’t spread any further than necessary and the US can lend support, when possible, to the least objectionable actors.

Posted by Martin Edwin AndersenJune 21, 2014 at 9:45 am

In a conflict that is feared to become ISIS’s western front and, as the Wilson Center’s David Aaron Miller notes, is “driven by memory, trauma, and political identity and existential issues,” the recognition of Israel as a modern indigenous Jewish nation-state and the rights of Palestinians to a national homeland are goals dually and fairly legitimized through a focus on indigeneity, helping drain the swamp in which al Qaeda and ISIS flourish.

Posted by SamJuly 9, 2014 at 1:33 pm

But…Who is winning?
It is not surprising to see how event unfold in Iraq in the last month which is partially the implementations of a long , medium and short term plans , collaborations and organisations that have been taken place among various factions who have a lot of interest in Iraq. Number one is the hidden agenda between the Kurds and Israel, where the latter have and since the creation of its state in 1948 have set eyes on Babylon.( http://www.meforum.org/3838/israel-kurds)
The Saudis, and since the first Gulf war have benefited from compensating the world oil market from the shortage because of short production of the Iraqi oil through OPEC. Recently the best solution to defence is to attack, hence the Saudi Kingdom opted to settle their differences with the west and in particular with the USA( by throwing the Sunni dictatorship of Saddam Hussain and replacing them with fairly and democratic elected government representing the 70% majority Iraqi Muslim Shia), plus the corrupted Saudi Kingdom vowed to fight Iran influence in Iraq by pumping billions of Dollars over many years into supporting financially and with arms to all the different Sunnis in Iraq to destabilise the country ( daily bombing of innocent Iraqi people) and the amount of support within the Radical Sunnis in Saudia Arabia ( Government and public) was evident in the latest episode in the north of Iraq( Baath Party members, Sunni army generals , Sunni Terrorist groups including Thawrat ElEshreen by the serial killer Hareth Elthari)
Thirdly it is in the best interest of the Saudi kingdom to keep the radical factions within the kingdom busy and have their attention swerved to an outside cause( A myth based on that ,the Iraqi Sunnis are not truly represented in the Iraqi Government , which is not a fact because simply their representations are based on the election results!)
It is not surprising to see the Kurds have gained from the latest events in Iraq (with the huge support from Israel )and have shown to the world as well as to to the normal Iraqis their true colour, and the Shia have proven to their own people they lacked a basic unity hence they are not getting a lot of support from the west ( including the British Media), and the Sunnis are now fighting and will keep fighting to survive from the atrocities that have been carried out by the ruthless and restless ideologies of ISIS because they have already turned against their yesterday’s ally)
But the west knows very well that these radical factions (I would rather not call them Muslim Radicals because a radical Jew, Christian or Hindu does not mean the whole of that religion are Fanatic or Radical) are supported hugely by the Saudis and the west need to realise that these merciless Sunni Radicals will turn their fight and threaten our cities, freedom, and peace one day like what the Al Qaida did and then there will be no winner including Israel or Kurdistan!

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